Mining in the western United States entered its great era after 1860 through use of the double-jack, black powder, hand steel, Bickford fuse, wire rope, and the steam engine. Those were the years of bonanza strikes: Henry Wickenburg s Vulture Mine in Arizona Territory; the main hard-rock gold strike in the desert Southwest; Ed Schieffelin s discovery of vast silver deposits in Tombstone, Arizona; and the Tonopah-Goldfield strike in Nevada, which netted over one hundred million dollars.
"Black Powder and Hand Steel "describes the miners and the machinery they used. Otis E. Young, Jr.,...